We recently received the French edition of our book The Competition Bicycle. It’s exciting to see our work translated into languages beyond English – after the German edition, there now is a French one.

Our French publisher, Éditions Vigot, did a great job with this book. It was printed by their favorite printer in France, and the quality of the photo reproduction is one of the best I have seen anywhere.

The bikes – like this one from the Paris newspaper courier races – really come to life. If you expected only racing bikes, you’ll be surprised, since we tried to cover the many different areas of competition on bicycles, including Paris-Brest-Paris, mountain biking and the Race Across America, in addition to better-known events like the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, world championships and hour records.

The bikes were selected not only for their competition history, but also for the technical innovations they brought to bicycles. For example, the 1930s Delangle track bike (above) also was one of the first machines made from Reynolds 531 tubing. Lightweight, thinwall frame tubing revolutionized how bikes ride and perform.

Editions Vigot spent a lot of time on the translation, and we double-checked it. That way, the history of how bicycles evolved from highwheelers with solid tires to modern machines with carbon-fiber disc wheels was rendered correctly and vividly.

3 Responses to The Competition Bicycle – French Edition

It still makes me laugh and it’s just so cool, that “they” (the French, I guess pretty much) could make a sport out of newspaper delivery! And to think, the bicycle is right there, at that nexus, that hub, of transportation and information.

The speed was mostly to increase the earnings of the couriers! They got paid per trip, and the rates were calculated based on average cyclist speeds. These guys were able to do multiple runs, especially since the papers appeared several times a day back then. It is said that the porteurs with the best runs earned more than the CEOs of the newspapers for whom they worked.